Projects and Blended Learning as Cornerstones of Future-Orientated Learning Culture

Vom Distanz- zum Projektlernen © © Goethe-Institut Vom Distanz- zum Projektlernen © Goethe-Institut

by Yvonne Bansmann and Martin Fugmann


“Face-to-face teaching, distance learning, home-schooling, school@Home, hybrid learning, emergency support…“ – these terms describe forms of organisation that ensured that our children were still able to continue learning following the (partial) closure of schools during the pandemic. Where there was already digital infrastructure and digitally supported practice in teaching, it was not only possible to maintain relationships with the students, but for learning to continue, albeit with great restrictions.

There is reference in public debate of dramatic deficits in learning:  The curricular demands in the core skills of mathematics, reading and writing skills and all other subjects had to be  adapted due to the pandemic to the new reality of learning at a distance. Also evident are deficits in social skills and effects of psychological stress that arises from isolation behind a screen at home or working through work plans.
Even if there is no systematic collection of data, is can be assumed that students perhaps achieved greater progress during the pandemic than in conventional schooling based on face-to-face teaching before Covid, to the extent that teachers were able to call upon reflected digital media concepts, in relation to skills like interactive use of technologies, digital application competence, handling information, media and technologies, initiative and self-management, productivity and responsibility, flexibility and ability to adapt.

If we wish to use findings from the crisis, we should look at a more comprehensive acquisition of cross-curricular skills and ask ourselves, what teaching and learning settings allow us to initiate the above-named cross-curricular skills along with the pure subject skills. The familiar concept of Blended Learning marks itself out as the learning arrangement of the future, in which conventional face-to-face teaching is coupled with e-learning.

Personalisation of learning and blended learning

The period of digitally supported distance learning has shown, despite all their limitations, the pedagogical potential of digital systems, if they are orchestrated in asynchronous teaching settings so that learning can be increasingly personalised. Thus it has been observed that rigid structures of teaching like the pace of learning, the place of learning, the sole control by the teacher, the domination of one learning pathway for everyone, in step together, and even the importance and usefulness on the insistence upon exams must be questioned in relation to the enforced change of structure of teaching, and then schools must be opened up the prospect of a re-design of teaching as digital teaching.

Personalisation of the learning succeeds on condition that the learning culture of the school no longer focuses exclusively on the acquisition of knowledge but offers a mix of teaching and learning concepts  founded on learning psychology that supplement and build on each other: Subject teaching (passing on of content by teachers), project teaching, self-managed work (increasingly supported digitally), learning support and flexible learning.

Blended Learning and Project Teaching at the Evangelisch Stiftisches Gymnasium

The development of teaching at the ESG aims to quantitatively und qualitatively increase the proportion of project learning, training in the 4Cs (Communication, Collaboration, Creativity, critical thinking) and thus place a personalised learning setting in self-learning phases beside the steered teaching from the front, in which “Blended Learning“, learning inside and outside the classroom at the learner’s own speed with individualised learning pathways and student empowerment are the focus.

Project work: The steps towards the outcome

  1. The starting point of every project is the development of a viable research question that ensures the subject of the project can be considered in depth.
  2. The students then formulate their learning aims supported by and led by teachers and develop their own learning outcomes.
  3. They structure their learning pathways using so-called “Kanban planning tools“, first in a non-digital form and, with increasing skill, also using digital tools.
  4. To get reliable information on the learning progress of the students, the criteria are developed in advance by the teachers,  so that students learn to formulate, check and, if necessary, modify their own learning aims.
Starting in Grades 5 and 6, subject barriers are broken down each school year in three project phases and an annual topic is worked on thematically (e.g., Environment, Food, Sustainability).

The focus of project-orientated learning is the initiation of cross-curricular skills to promote co-creative and self-managed working. The research questions become more complex, depending on the year group and presentation by digital products becomes more demanding. The outcomes of the research questions are presented from the start in digital products. 

To avoid  sometimes tiring presentation phases, Barcamp like presentation formats are currently being developed.

At the end of a project like this, the students evaluate the topic and organisation and make suggestions for improvement for the next year group.

After two years of trials of project-orientated learning, it can be stated that the students were able to significantly extend their cross-curricular and digital skills even in the distance learning phases. The involvement of the students both in the planning and completion and the evaluation, the orientation around the 4 Cs, systematic and regular feedback and the change in the role of the teacher also affect traditional subject teaching and so lead to a perceptible change in the learning culture in all lesson settings over all age groups.

The support of learning and advice promote sustainable learning success and the associated growth in knowledge because one of the things the students learn in the feedback process is to consider errors as necessary and positively. In the distance learning phase, we use synchronous communication primarily for feedback and individual advice and support of the learning processes. According to our observations, this is the central paradigm change yet is the most difficult to realise, as it assumes a change of role for the teachers, which is often linked to a fear of loss of control.

The main difficulty for the organisation and establishment of project-orientated learning form that must be overcome are strict timetable structures.

To increase the willingness of colleagues to change, the ESG school leadership appealed to the pedagogical ethos of the colleagues and created space for development – there is enough direction in schools and in our system, which makes it even more important to open spaces of empowerment in which those involved can meet safely and trustfully.

Thus, at ESG, the issue of realising project teaching in a cross-curricular way with no temporal barriers was taken up by a group of colleagues with external help and advice. Additional time was allocated, space was made for planning and innovation and the mandate for implementation and trial. Further impetus for innovation was given e.g., by the development and use of new, contemporary, assessment formats, the completion of Barcamps for test preparation in face-to-face and distance lessons, new forms of organisation teaching during examination periods, the introduction of subject-specific focus days and connected with that, dissolution of the timetable.

School development that builds on the innovation processes described above can succeed if it is characterised by mutual trust and appreciation. Teachers, students and parents are hugely competent in developing good learning conditions and reflecting on them. Schools can be developed in dialogue and process with all stakeholders in school life if the direction was jointly agreed and leadership holds the course according to the agreed principles and framework conditions.

After the school closures, there can be no return to “normal“: in view of the more than fourteen months in which we have been weaned away from the social and learning space of “school“,  we have to align all learning settings to the socio-emotional, cognitive and cultural learning conditions and thereby making Personalisation the “guiding star“ of our school and teaching development. “Distance learning“, “school@....“  have blurred the boundaries of the rigid and narrow “classroom“ and shown that under certain conditions, learning can be very successful outside school too. Schools themselves will again grow in importance as places of democratic, aesthetically cultural, spiritual experiences and as a place of joint learning after the pandemic if we succeed in designing teaching and learning more creatively, and thus with greater future-orientation in the spirit of the comments made above and continue to develop it.

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